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Standard Deck Tech – Azorius Aggro

This week I’ll be doing a Standard Deck Tech for each of the five guilds from Ravnica Allegiance. Today I’ll be starting off Standard Deck Tech week with an Azorius deck! Azorius is known often associated with Control Decks but today I’m going the opposite direction and wanting to have a creature based aggro deck. I like the Mono White aggro deck that is currently in Standard and that might be a good starting point to what I want to create with this deck. It’s time to ditch the thoughts of a usual control deck and change Azorius up a little bit.
I first want to start off with a list of cards from Ravnica Allegiance that I believe could possibly be a good fit in the deck. These could include main deck cards and cards that would eventually end up in the sideboard.

Potential Ravnica Allegiance Cards for the deck

Now that I’ve pulled out the best from Ravnica Allegiance, I want to turn my attention to the card pool from the rest of Standard. There are plenty of cards to choose from, so let’s see what list I’ve come up with of potential cards to put in the deck.

Potential Existing Cards from Standard

Now that I have a list of cards to choose from to make the deck, it’s now time to decide what goes and what stays. What I like to do first is break them down by their casting cost with creatures and noncreature spells separated. Let’s see how that breakdown looks below.

1-Casting Cost Spells

The tough choice when it comes to picking 1-drop creatures is choosing how many you want to have in your deck. This is an aggressive deck, but at the same time wants to have some power in the mid-game as well. I like Dauntless Bodyguard and Skymarcher Aspirant because of their 2 power they provide for more early damage. Skymarcher Aspirant can also provide some reach later in the game when it has flying. As for the remaining two choices, I want to have Snubhorn Sentry over Hunted Witness. Legion’s Landing is basically a 1-drop creature that can help you later in the game by providing extra mana and/or creatures. Spell Pierce is great to use out of the sideboard against control or matches with lots of removal.

2-Casting Cost Spells

Tocatli Honor Guard is a situational creature and is probably better suited for the sideboard. I think Tithe Taker is a great addition to this deck and will prevent your opponent from casting removal spells like Settle the Wreckage on turn four. It also provides some security if it dies thanks to its Afterlife 1 ability. Some extra ones will be good in the sideboard against certain matchups. Adanto Vanguard is always a great threat that is hard for your opponent to deal with. When it comes to pumping up all your creatures, I think that there are better options than Pride of Conquerors in this deck. Like Spell Pierce, I think Negate will be great against certain matchups in the format coming out of the sideboard.

3-Casting Cost Spells

I think Deputy of Detention is great to come out of the sideboard against decks that will have little to no removal as a great threat. Benalish Marshall is a must have in the deck to provide bonuses to the whole team. A key card from Ravnica Allegiance for this deck is Unbreakable Formation. It can be used as a defensive tool to stop against cards like Deafening Clarion or Cleansing Nova. Another new card is Dovin, Grand Arbiter. This can help in two ways, by either ramping up its loyalty to use its ultimate ability quicker or producing 1/1 Thopter Tokens to build your army. It isn’t uncommon to play three 1-drop creatures in the first two turns with this deck. If you can do that and attack in with its +1 ability, you will have enough loyalty to use its -7 ultimate ability on the next turn. Lawmage’s Binding doesn’t seem like the best fit for this deck. History of Benalia just continues to be a strong card in providing constant threats with a chance at a huge attack for one turn.

Angel of Grace and Lyra Dawnbringer are both powerhouse cards, but don’t belong in the main deck for this aggro build. I do like having Lyra Dawnbringer in the sideboard to bring in against matchups where you might need a little more evasion than other times. Venerated Loxodon is a must have for this deck and just provides so much power spread across multiple creatures.

Split cards

The goal of this deck is to get in for as much damage as quickly as possible with all-out attacks. Out of the two split cards, Depose // Deploy does this the best. It can tap out their only blocker or provide some reach in the air as well as some life gain to top it off.

This deck only uses 22 lands because of its aggro nature. With 5 blue spells in the main and a few more in the sideboard, I decided to go with just the 8 dual lands to cover the blue that we need for the deck.

Now that we’ve figured out what cards to use, its now time to build the deck! Here is what I came up with for quantities for the final deck list.

I’m quite happy with the build of this deck and look forward to playing it in the coming months. It’s nice to have an aggressive deck that can just overwhelm your opponent. Thanks again for reading this Standard Deck Tech on Ravnica Allegiance deck tech week. Join me again tomorrow for a new guild and a new Standard deck.